I recently told my friend, Sarah, a story about the time my dad was a stay-at-home-father and we would go shopping at Pathmark all the time. One day, there was a woman giving out coupons there for Dawn dish detergent. She refused to give him a coupon book because he was a man. Really, she told him it was “for moms.” He wrote a letter to Dawn and they sent him a ton of coupons. I remember him telling me that something like this would happen to me, and probably often, because I was a “smart girl.” Being a father with two young girls – this was before my brother was born – his opinion of guys was that they were all predators and good-for-nuthins.

Being a woman in technology, today, it’s hard thinking about that story while constantly having to answer the “are you offended by this” question whenever some tech event or mouthpiece says something that excludes women. It seems to be happening a lot, and the responses to women’s feeling are generally supportive or otherwise include the classic “oh, we didn’t mean to offend” rationale. Unlike my dad’s situation, we never get coupons in the mail. The lack of a proper apology is usually what I am most offended by, not the offending comment itself.

Saying you didn’t mean to offend someone, by the way, isn’t an apology. You’re just shifting your guilt onto the person you’re basically refusing to apologize to, most likely to save face.

It’s easy for me to brush off the moronic sexist comments – and boy do they seem to be aplenty in the past several months – because, fortunately, things said to or about me have been pretty mild. I used to roll my eyes whenever someone asked me if I was offended by a sexist joke, the idea of there not being many women in the field, or by some insensitive remark made by someone in technology – not because I think it should just be ignored, but because of how often I’m asked this question. So if you’re a blogger emailing me, a reader, a family member, or a friend, this is what I think:

When it comes to women in technology, I don’t expect anyone to walk on eggshells and go out of their way to please us women. I expect everyone, of every gender, sex, race, and so forth, to just be respectful of each other. Yes, I know it’s a lot to expect, but I have every right to high expectations for the people in my field, just like they have for me. Whenever someone feels excluded because of a joke or comment, it makes me sad and angry – sad because they feel excluded, and angry because the person who said the comment assumed that their apparent wit superseded the emotions of another human being.

It’s hard to wrap up your feelings on something like this in a tiny package, but in this case it wasn’t. There is nothing more simple to me than not being an asshole or pausing before letting words fall out of my mouth – especially when I’m doing it in public for crying out loud.

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